Financial services are crucial for business operations and require a high degree of concern and caution. However, associated tasks can often be time-consuming, and small errors can have significant impacts.
Automation in finance and accounting empowers businesses to redirect their team’s focus while accessing reliable and timely information. Automated processes help teams continue working on initiative-driving strategies by eliminating repetitive, manual tasks and enhancing collaboration.
In this guide, you will learn more about the benefits of finance automation and which processes can be the most beneficial for your business.
The goal of automation is to enhance your process efficiencies by eliminating or reducing activities that do not add value. Automated processes require little to no human effort and can be a cheaper and more efficient way to operate. The technology you leverage triggers predefined steps to complete tasks without manual intervention.
Automation in accounting involves digitizing every job possible while maintaining high quality and agility. Many companies are relying on financial automation to reduce errors and empower their teams to tackle more challenging and thought-provoking tasks. Machine learning and artificial intelligence can complete repetitive tasks that are often time-consuming for your team while providing more accurate results.
By using these processes, you can redirect finance team efforts to drive strategy and create more value.
Automation offers a wide range of benefits for businesses of all sectors and industries. Automated processes are becoming more prevalent across the world because of their ability to empower organizations and improve day-to-day tasks. By leveraging finance process automation, you can:
When choosing the automation of finance processes, it’s essential to consider which responsibilities require little or no human involvement. Some processes may seem complex, but automation can quickly aid your team in finding more efficient solutions. Below, you can find various tasks you can automate to empower your team and streamline operations.
Your team must know how much money your customers owe your business if you provide services or goods. You can automate accounts receivable tasks such as recurring invoices, recurring credit card payments, and overdue payment reminders so you can receive your owed amounts on a more consistent schedule.
Automation software can send your customers automatic invoices you generate on a determined schedule. This strategy can give customers better visibility of their requests and services so you can receive more timely payments. For customers who miss a payment date, you can send automated reminders to direct them to payment options. These automated messages can prompt your customers to complete payments they may have forgotten about without requiring you to reach out directly or wait weeks or months for the correct payment amount.
You can also use automation to automatically process customer credit cards on a predictable schedule. These auto-pay options offer easy solutions for customers and businesses, as they eliminate the need for manual reminders or actions. You can further leverage automated messages to encourage your audience to access a self-service portal or pay online to expedite the payment process while eliminating the need to input data or customer information.
Paying your debts on time is crucial for maintaining strong relationships with vendors and appearing as a reliable business to potential partners and customers. Neglecting owed debts can cause late payments, missed discounts, strained relationships, and late fees that harm your business.
Automation offers a simple solution for reducing these adverse outcomes by setting recurring payments. You can select the date and amount you need to pay and let your tools do the rest. You can also set up payment reminders if you have different expenses each pay period to ensure you stay on schedule.
You can automate invoice capture, approval, coding, and payment to maintain strong relationships and provide an accurate view of your company finances and budget. You can also leverage additional planning tools to allocate the appropriate budget automatically before invoices reach accounts payable.
Businesses often face problems with purchasing requests due to incomplete, missing, or incorrect information. A lack of spending control can cause impromptu orders that do not adhere to complete procurement processes. Inaccurate or incomplete data can disrupt your processes, whether a result of manual entry errors, unstructured forms, or receiving requests across various channels.
Finance automation makes it easy to avoid these issues by offering streamlined processes for payment reconciliation, procurement tasks, and spending to facilitate order management. Your team can forego spreadsheets and orders while ensuring they have all the information necessary to complete objectives. You can use automation to standardize request creation, set mandatory actions, outline purchasing conditions, and establish rules to prevent errors while maintaining compliance when processing requests.
Running a payroll can be a daunting responsibility. Processing information such as possible deductions, overtime wages, hourly compensation, and multiple tax codes takes time, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of employees.
Thankfully, you can digitize many steps in this process, such as adding employees and their banking data to one system, setting different hourly rates or salaries, and dedicating payment dates for automatic processing. Advanced tools also make it easy to store important documents, such as new hire information and tax declarations. Employees can view upcoming paychecks and manage data, such as if their marital status has changed or they’ve moved to a new address.
You can automate financial reporting to access vital insights for informed decision-making. The more reports you run, the faster you can collect essential data to drive strategy and identify weak spots.
You can deliver reports to staff members and include multiple reports in one email for efficient collaboration. Dashboards can collect information like account status, expenses, conversions, department performance, and more. After deciding which reports you want, you can also create a predetermined schedule to receive reports at the same time every day, week, or month for consistency.
You can leverage multiple types of technology to make it easier to scan documents and reduce physical paperwork. Advanced tools can extract data from documents, including bills, receipts, invoices, inspection reports, and packing slips, so you can skip manual data entry processes. This format also makes it easy to stay organized, so you can easily access and view your essential documents when tax season rolls around.
Reimbursement requests can be straightforward but quickly find a place in the backlog where many people submit requests across various channels. Challenges with reimbursement often include employees requesting incorrect amounts due to unclear expense policies, delayed reimbursements due to missing information or late filing, and poor visibility from a lack of integration with various systems.
Finance automation can address these issues by providing a structure for each reimbursement request. You can use automation to provide clear information regarding travel costs and similar expenses, allow employees to monitor their request status, send notifications to approvers, and ensure each request undergoes the same process to create a more organized and efficient process. You can also integrate other technology to capture data regarding historical expense trends so you can determine where common challenges exist.
All technology exhibits benefits and challenges. As many businesses embrace AI and advanced technology to automate processes, several problems can arise. It’s important to understand the risks you may face before implementing a new solution so you can take the appropriate actions to minimize adverse outcomes and create a smooth transition to your automated processes.
There are many automation services you can use to streamline your processes. At Salient Process, you can find capabilities, including process discovery and mining, seamless integrations, business process management, low-code application platforms, and more. We empower businesses with comprehensive solutions, including:
Embracing automation can bring many benefits to your business. When you’re ready to leverage new technologies and advanced solutions, you can rely on the team at Salient Process to guide you.
Salient Process is a global leader in aligning enterprise goals and processes. Our cutting-edge Digital Business Automation solutions enhance workflow and generate the maximum ROI. Partnering with us allows you to access top-tier automation services, expert training, and comprehensive workshops to empower your company to excel.
Talk with us today to learn more about our services and how we can help your business drive success.
